


down beside your red firelight

by indigoat



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Chubby Aziraphale (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Queen - Freeform, Self Confidence Issues, Serenading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 15:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19770757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigoat/pseuds/indigoat
Summary: Aziraphale is feeling self-conscious about his body. Crowley knows exactly how to remedy this.





	down beside your red firelight

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because 
> 
> a) I keep seeing people draw TV Aziraphale skinny which is uhh blasphemy  
> b) I couldn't stop thinking about Crowley serenading Aziraphale with Queen songs and  
> c) I'm a sucker for self-confidence hurt/comfort fics 
> 
> This is the first ineffable husbands fic I've completed because for some reason I find them difficult to write for so I hope it's alright. I also listened to the same Queen song for the entirety of working on this and now my brain feels like mush. Cheers.

Aziraphale had never really given much thought to his earthly body. It was simply a vehicle in which he could indulge in human pleasures: tasting aged Italian wines, feeling sunlight against his skin, dancing with other humans. The things he used his vessel for were probably not at all what Heaven had intended for him, but he was perfectly happy to accept that he was the most hedonistic angel there ever was and ever would be. 

Despite that, there was one particular human pleasure he’d never taken part in (not with anyone else at least), and now that it was on his mind it was changing the way he thought about the vessel that had been his for so many millennia. Not once over the centuries, as he lounged in gentlemen’s clubs and posed for creative types who praised him as their muse, not once had he ever thought about his body in relation to attraction… sexual attraction. 

Well, who had the time to keep up with all of that, anyway! He’d lived through enough trends and beauty standards to know that it was all poppycock—it rather seemed as if every half century the humans would change their minds on what was attractive, flip-flopping between physical features as if they alone were the only thing that mattered about someone. He was still impressed (not to mention a bit indignant) that Michelangelo had single-handedly changed the male ideal from delicate and effeminate to burly and tough with a couple of paintings and a sculpture or two during the Renaissance. 

So, poppycock or not, Aziraphale couldn’t help but be acutely aware of what modern society thought of bodies like his, bodies that took up a bit more space in the world. He was perfectly content to be soft on his own, but he couldn’t help but wonder, sometimes, what did _Crowley_ think about his body? Would he prefer it if Aziraphale, as Gabriel had so eloquently put it, “lost the gut?”

Of course, Crowley had never mentioned anything like that to Aziraphale, on the contrary, it seemed as if now that they’d both come clean about their feelings to one another, he was determined to make up for two thousand years of compliments he hadn’t been able to say before. But, and there was that little nagging thought that Aziraphale couldn’t seem to shake, he also hadn’t attempted to move their relationship to a more intimate level. Perhaps he was just taking things slow, Aziraphale pointed out to himself, but Crowley didn’t take _anything_ slow, argued another treacherous voice in his head, so maybe the problem is actually you!

Aziraphale rested his head in his hands and groaned. 

` ` `

Crowley glanced at Aziraphale over the tops of his glasses. Over the past few months, they had fallen into a familiar, rather domestic schedule, culminating in spending a few hours tucked in Aziraphale’s study, the angel reading a book and drinking a cup of tea while Crowley sprawled across most of the sofa, skimming the local human newspaper or tapping about on his mobile. However, tonight Aziraphale seemed out of sorts, he had selected a book at random of the shelf when it usually took him about twenty minutes to decide what he wanted to read, not to mention, he hadn’t even gotten past the title page. Crowley pushed himself into a more presentable position and cleared his throat. 

“You’re looking pensive tonight, angel. Got it all over your face. Something wrong?”

Aziraphale looked up from his book, the nonchalant smile spreading across his face clearly inauthentic. “Ah, it’s… it’s nothing, nothing at all,” he answered, but he had never really been good at lying, especially not about important things, and especially not to Crowley.

“I know when something’s bothering you, angel,” Crowley said gently, his usually sardonic voice soft. “You don’t have to tell me what it is if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, it’s just…,” Aziraphale sighed, avoiding Crowley’s eyes, “well, it’s just, I was thinking about what Gabriel said about my losing some weight, and you know, I haven’t really ever put much thought into my body, and, I was wondering if _maybe_ you would prefer if I—”

Crowley cut him off by putting up a hand.

“Angel. Aziraphale.” He pulled off his sunglasses and looked into Aziraphale’s eyes. “First off, anything Gabriel says is complete bollocks. Knew he deserved that little hell-fire scare I gave him. Second,” his eyes, which had narrowed at the mention of the archangel, softened again, “you don’t really think I would have spent two thousand years pining over you if I didn’t find every inch of you absolutely breathtaking, do you?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathed, sounding a good deal more heartened just in that syllable. He paused. “Well, if that’s so, why haven’t you ever, you know, initiated anything… more?”

Crowley let out a frustrated groan. “Tell me you haven’t been thinking that just because I _haven’t_ doesn’t mean I don’t _want to_ , angel, _you’re_ the one who told me I go too fast for you.”

“Crowley, I said that nearly sixty years ago!” Aziraphale spluttered. Crowley threw up his arms in defence, but he quickly added, “That was very considerate of you, though. To wait, I mean.”

“Yeah, well,” Crowley said noncommittally, still not good with thank-you’s. “You really thought I didn’t want to do anything with you because of your weight?”

“It does sound rather silly when you say it out loud,” Aziraphale admitted. 

“Not silly,” Crowley said, “not if it was worrying you. I’ll have to fix that, though—” his eyes lit up, and he touched Aziraphale’s forearm briefly before jumping off the sofa and crossing the room to where the phonograph sat on a side table. He knelt in front of shelf of vinyl for a moment before selecting a record, straightening, and placing it on the turntable, moving the needle delicately with a long-fingered hand. Snapping his fingers, the room went dark, with a single spotlight falling over him. 

Crowley locked eyes with Aziraphale, tilting his head back as the song began.

  
_“Ah you gonna take me home tonight,_  
_Ah down beside that red fire light,_  
_Ah you gonna let it all hang out,_  
_Fat bottomed girls you make the rocking world go round…”_  


“Oh, really, Crowley,” Aziraphale said in that way of his, shaking his head. That way of his, being: _this is really too much,_ but _I’m certainly not going to refuse it_. Crowley smiled in victory; Aziraphale had always fancied being the center of romantic gestures, and he’d suspected being serenaded was somewhere on that list of fanciful gestures—even if ‘serenade’ was perhaps too elegant of a word for what Crowley was doing, strutting around to the tempo and raising an imaginary microphone to his lips as the first verse began.

_“I was just a skinny lad, never knew no good from bad…”_

Crowley wasn’t nearly as coordinated as Freddie Mercury when it came to theatrical choreography, but he knew Aziraphale would think his atrocious dance moves endearing, would melt at the thought of his cool, classy demon making a goddamn fool of himself, just to make him feel better. Crowley knew almost anything he did would be met with adoration by the angel, and he wanted Aziraphale to know that all of that unconditional love and affection was mutual. It wasn’t a matter of Crowley loving Aziraphale _in spite_ of how he looked, he loved him _because_ of the way he looked, along with everything else that made Aziraphale who he was—his affinity for Shakespearean tragedies, for helping strangers, for bringing birdseed to the park so he could feed the ducks while they strolled along. The fact that he owned a bookshop but refused to part with even a single book. All of that was what made Aziraphale who he was, and to Crowley, all of it was perfect.

He slid across the floor until he was front of Aziraphale, shredding an imaginary electric guitar to the riff of the bridge and dropping to his knees as the third verse kicked in, locking eyes with the angel. Aziraphale had one hand over his mouth, he looked like he might be a second away from bursting into tears, or perhaps discorporating. 

_“Oh, but I still get my pleasure,  
Still got my greatest treasure…”_

Crowley leapt to his feet again, shouting out the final chorus, throwing his hand over his heart as he bleated out an exaggerated “pleassse” and ending with an enthusiastic crashing of imaginary drumsticks to imaginary cymbals. The spotlight went out; the lamps of the study relit themselves and he was left breathing a bit heavier than normal, but then again, Crowley noticed with satisfaction, so was Aziraphale. He held his hand out to the angel, who allowed himself to be pulled up off the couch and flush against Crowley’s body. 

“Crowley, that was—” 

“I hope you enjoyed that angel, because it was a one-time thing, you hear me?”

“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Aziraphale told him, eyes sparkling.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Crowley conceded, one of his hands stroking absentmindedly at Aziraphale’s hip. “Now, what say you we clear up the rest of this… misunderstanding?”

Laughing at the Aziraphale’s eager nodding, Crowley tightened his grip on the angel’s hand and pulled him towards the door, extinguishing the lights as they left the study together.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if it's very in-character to have an angel feeling self-conscious about not meeting human standards of beauty, but the bottom line is I wrote this for human readers who struggle with self-confidence also I think Aziraphale would approve of me indulging in one of my favorite fic tropes. Can I hear a wahoo?


End file.
